Are ice creams and cold drinks really refreshing?

When it is very hot, everyone enjoys tasting a good ice cream or quenching their thirst with a glass of soda filled with ice cubes. But do these sweet delicacies provide real refreshment to our body? At first glance, it seems logical that introducing something cold into our body helps bring down our internal temperature. Unfortunately, this temporary effect is quickly replaced by the heat generated by the digestion, attests Peter Poortvliet, a physiology researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia. ” A small amount of liquid will lose its cooling effect fairly quickly when warmed by surrounding organs, and ingesting a large amount of cold liquid will cause blood circulation to slow down, making heat transport less efficient “.

Cold drinks slow down sweating

However, the cooling effect of cold drinks seems very real. But this is explained rather by the rehydration they provide: by integrating more water, we will tend to sweat more, which cools the body by evapotranspiration. When it is very hot, we can thus lose up to a liter of water per day, which must absolutely be compensated for in order to maintain this cooling mechanism.

Surprisingly, hot drinks contribute to this cooling effect by increasing body temperature, which will give the signal to increase sweating. A 2012 study thus shows that the heat accumulated in the body is less when drinking water at 50°C than with water at 1.5 or 10°C. Heat loss is also less when drinking a cold liquid. In hot weather, however, the most important thing is to hydrate well. If, for that, you prefer an iced drink to a hot tea, there is no need to deprive yourself.